My Interview By Tamar UK

I was recently asked by Tamar UK if they could interview me and post on their blog and on social media sights in connection with social media week. Of course I said yes and I thought I would also post it on my blog as I really enjoyed answering their questions.

So here they are:

1. What made you want to start a blog? Was there a particular idea behind it? Do you have any aspirations for your blog? Where would you like it to lead?

I started my blog after following and reading some other parent bloggers. I wanted somewhere to vent about being a parent where others would know how I feel and also a place I could showcase my boy’s achievements and our days out. I don’t have any plans on where I would like my blog to go, I am just enjoying writing about our day to day life as a family and interacting with so many lovely people.

2. Do you have another job, or is blogging your main job?

I work part time for my husband who is a partner of a company. I look after their advertising and social media. I wouldn’t say blogging is a job, more a hobby as I love to do it. It’s not something I have to do, it’s something I love to do.

3. Do you have more than one blog you manage?

No I have just the one blog, this takes up so much of my time that another blog would be far too much.

4. Tell us about your blog/life balance. How often do you post? How do you come up with ideas for posts?

I blog as and when I can. As it is a hobby, life comes first and my blog is an add on to in where I can share our life with people. I try and post every day, I schedule posts so I have posts written for about a week or so in advance. This way if life was to get busy I could spread them out to keep my blog interactive. My post ideas come from my everyday life and my children. My blog is centered on them and they provide the content.

5. How long was it before you started to notice traffic to your blog?

I have only been blogging since January this year and didn’t really know where to start. I started to notice traffic onto my blog after I attended a blogging event and I learnt I should be scheduling twitter posts and I realised I needed to have posts ready to post in the morning and not just post as and when I wrote something. So I noticed traffic coming to my blog after about 5 months of blogging.

6. When you first started, how did you promote your blog? Did you use any specific channels, e.g. Twitter, Instagram etc? Where did you see the biggest engagement in terms of social and what was the best thing to grow your community size?

When I first started I used Twitter mostly and a little bit of Instagram. I used twitter to interact with people and to post my blog links, I saw my biggest engagement on twitter and I still do. I now use Facebook but I find Facebook very hard to get likes so my main social platform is twitter. And I believe twitter is the best place to grow your community, Just chatting to people helps grow a community I believe.

7. How long before you started to get approached by organisations? How did they approach you and what did you think?

I was first approached and ran my first review and giveaway in April, so 3 months after starting. They approached me by email as I have my email on my twitter account. I was really excited when I received that email as I had seen people doing reviews and really wanted to do one but didn’t know how they came about. After that I got one a month which was lovely and as my blog is growing and I am engaging with more people I am getting approached by more organisations.

8. How do you retain your authenticity when working with a brand?

I write honestly and I write as I would any blog post. I don’t change my style of writing so to remain myself and so the review is honest and real.

9. What’s the worst approach you’ve ever had from a brand or agency?

I haven’t had one as I haven’t been approached that much. And every approach I have had has been very professional.

10. And what’s the best approach you’ve ever had?

I was approached by a brand recently and you could tell that they had read my blog and they had taken time to find more out about me by reading what I had written. It made me feel like they actually wanted to work with ME.

11.   Do you ever proactively approach brands you want to work with?

I have only every approached a brand once. It was for a day out when we were on holiday. I thought the boys would love it and it would be a great opportunity for me and them. Luckily they said yes so I haven’t been put off by doing it again. But I still don’t have the full confidence to do it again, yet.

12.   And finally, are there any particular pearls of wisdom you wish you could go back in time and tell yourself before you started blogging?

Be yourself and write for yourself. I haven’t been blogging long but when I started I was writing what I thought people wanted to read. Now I write about what I want to write and it’s more natural.